Civil War Antietam Vacation Photographs - Burnside's Bridge

The Battle of Antietam, also called the Battle of Sharpsburg was fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek. The Battle of Antietam was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties, including more than 3,600 killed. While the Union Forces outnumbered the Confederate forces by 75,000 to 38,000, the battle ended up in a tactial draw, with no clear gains for either side. This was due to poor communication and inadequate leadership on the part of the Union generals.

The battle of Antietam took place in three separate phases, although the phases were actually supposed to take place simultaneously. The first phase took place in the north part of the Antietam Battlefield on Miller's Farm in a field now known simply as The Cornfield (or the Bloody Cornfield), and the surrounding wooded areas known as North Woods, East Woods and West Woods. The Union objective was a small church known as Dunker Church.

As the fighting took place in the Bloody Cornfield, it rolled over to the middle of the Antietam Battlefield into the second phase of the Battle of Antietam. Much of the fighting in this phase took place around a small rural road known as Sunken Lane. After the battle, Sunken Lane became known as Bloody Lane in response to the terrible casualties that took place there.

Phase three of the Battle of Antietam was south of Bloody Lane. Starting on Antietam Creek Union forces under command of General Burnside fought their way across a small bridge now known as Burnside's Bridge. Union troops ultimately drove through this part of the battlefield and had the Confederate forces on the run until they collided with 3,000 Rebel soldiers who were part of General A. P. Hill's Light Division, who arrived on the scene at the last moment, following an exhausting 17 mile march from Harpers Ferry.

Although the battle of Antietam was tactically inconclusive, it ended Robert E. Lee's Maryland campaign and the Confederate forces were forced to withdraw to Virginia. The Battle of Antietam was also enough of a victory to give President Abraham Lincoln the confidence to announce his Emancipation Proclamation. This proclamation changed the dynamics of the Civil War, and discouraged the British and French governments from potential plans for recognition of the Confederacy.

Burnside's Bridge was a focal point during Phase three of the battle of Antietam.

McClellan's plan called for Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside and the IX Corps to conduct a diversionary attack in support of Hooker's I Corps, hoping to draw Confederate attention away from the intended main attack in the north. However, Burnside was instructed to wait for explicit orders before launching his attack, and those orders did not reach him until 10 a.m.

Only 400 men of the 2nd and 20th Georgia regiments, with two artillery batteries, defended Rohrbach's Bridge, a three-span, 125-foot (38 m) stone structure that was the southernmost crossing of the Antietam. It would become known to history as Burnside's Bridge because of the notoriety of the coming battle. The bridge was a difficult objective. The road leading to it ran parallel to the creek and was exposed to enemy fire. The bridge was dominated by a 100-foot high wooded bluff on the west bank, strewn with boulders from an old quarry, making infantry and sharpshooter fire from good covered positions a dangerous impediment to crossing.

Three separate assaults were launched on Burnside's Bridge by Union forces. The first two were repelled by the whithering fire from the Georgia troops on the hill.

The third attempt to take the bridge was at 12:30 p.m. by 51st New York and the 51st Pennsylvania, who, with adequate artillery support and a promise that a recently canceled whiskey ration would be restored if they were successful, charged downhill and took up positions on the east bank. By 1 p.m., Confederate ammunition was running low, and they withdrew from the hillside. The Georgians had cost the Federals more than 500 casualties, giving up fewer than 160 themselves. And they had stalled Burnside's assault on the southern flank for more than three hours.